Publications

Lynn Sharp Paine is a Baker Foundation Professor and John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School. A member and former chair of the General Management unit, she has served in numerous leadership positions including Senior... View Details

March 2007 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Wal-Mart, 2007

By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind

In 2007, Wal-Mart faced challenges to its historically high growth rate. Lagging same-store sales and setbacks overseas led the company to consider strategic shifts. Wal-Mart was the world's largest retailer, but competition had become particularly acute as the company... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Management Practices and Processes; Rural Scope; Human Resources; Problems and Challenges; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Globalized Firms and Management; Marketing Strategy; Growth Management; Urban Scope; Retail Industry; United States

December 2022
Article

Cost Standard Set Program: Moving Forward to Standardization of Cost Assessment Based on Clinical Condition

By: Anna Paula Beck da Silva Etges, Richard D. Urman, Anne Geubelle, Robert Kaplan and Carisi Anne Polanczyk

This communication announces the International Cost Standard Set Program. Its goal is to establish global standardized frameworks for measuring the costs of treating specific clinical conditions. A scientific committee, including 16 international healthcare cost... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Value-based Health Care; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Industry

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February 2005 (Revised March 2006)
Case

PCAOB, The (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Kim Bettcher

Members of the Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board--a private-sector, nonprofit body created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002--must determine the form and content of a new auditing standard on internal control that will fulfill the requirements of Section 404 of the... View Details

Keywords: Law; Financial Reporting; Corporate Governance; Standards; Government Administration; Accounting Audits

June 2019 (Revised April 2020)
Teaching Note

Vox Capital: Pioneering Impact Investing in Brazil

By: Julie Battilana, Marissa Kimsey and Falko Paetzold

Teaching Note for HBS No. 417-051. This Teaching Note provides conceptual foundations and teaching plan recommendations for the case on Vox Capital, a firm that launched one of the first impact investing funds in Brazil. The learning objectives are to understand how an... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Social Performance Measurement; Social Entrepreneurship; Investment Funds; Social Enterprise; Brazil

October 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

The Joslin Diabetes Center

By: Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg and Scott Wallace

The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts is a leading center for diabetes care, clinician training, and research. The incidence of diabetes is rising precipitously worldwide, challenging quality of life with its complications and rapidly accelerating health... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Service Delivery; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Corporate Finance; Health Industry; Boston

September 2022
Case

ROI vs. ROI: The Grupo Baobá Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Jiawei Ye and Grace Headinger

Fernando Scodro, a third-generation member of his family, mulled over the next step in integrating an ESG strategy into his family office’s investment portfolio. While his family office, Grupo Baobá, had made excellent progress in incorporating his family’s values into... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; ESG; Green Building; Family; Partnership; Latin America; Brazil; Buildings and Facilities; Green Buildings; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Financial Management; Partners and Partnerships; Financial Services Industry; Brazil; Latin America

09 Oct 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Habit Formation and Rational Addiction: A Field Experiment in Handwashing

Keywords: by Reshmaan Hussam, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol

21 Jan 2021
Video

José Alejandro Cortés

José Alejandro Cortés, President of the Colombia-based diversified business group Grupo Bolìvar, explains that he began the group’s international process by moving into countries that spoke the same language. He describes first venturing into Venezuela due to its... View Details

09 Nov 2020
Video

Muhammad Musa

Muhammad Musa, the Executive Director of the BRAC International since 2015, explains that the NGO does not make all its operations in one country financially self-sustaining as it considers outside funding can be a source of new knowledge. For the same reason BRAC... View Details

April 2004 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Accounting Fraud at WorldCom

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David Kiron

The principal players in WorldCom's accounting fraud included CFO Scott Sullivan, the General Accounting and Internal Audit departments, external auditor Arthur Andersen, and the board of directors. The case provides sufficient detail to allow for a full discussion of... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Governing and Advisory Boards; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Financial Reporting; Organizational Culture; Corporate Governance; Accounting Audits

October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo

As Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over videoconference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization's Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Customer-centricity; Banks and Banking; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technological Innovation; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance; AI and Machine Learning; Financial Services Industry; Australia

November 2013 (Revised November 2014)
Case

Infection Control at Massachusetts General Hospital

By: Robert S. Huckman and Nikolaos Trichakis

The case explores the challenges facing Massachusetts General Hospital concerning the adoption of a new infection control policy, which promises to improve operational performance, patient safety, and profitability. The new policy requires coordination between... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Integration; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Health Industry; Boston

October 1981
Case

Tony Santino (A)

A recent MBA without a stable work history in the private sector feels that he is being forced to compromise his personal convictions and professional integrity through a violation of the Robinson-Patman Act. This person is in his mid-thirties, married, and carries... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Personal Development and Career; Laws and Statutes

Teaching

Overview

By: Tatiana Sandino

Professor Sandino teaches the second-year MBA course Mastering Strategy Execution. She also teaches the main doctoral course in management accounting, Management Control and Performance Measurement. Professor Sandino has taught several other MBA courses including the... View Details

Research Summary

Career and Personal Renewal at Mid-Life

Carl S. Sloane has been studying mid- and late-life transitions in careers and life structures. Two central issues identified in his research, and reflected in the instructional materials for the executive education workshop Age of Options, are (1) the relationship... View Details

January 2007
Case

Lou Pritchett: Negotiating the P&G Relationship with Wal-Mart

By: James K. Sebenius and Ellen Knebel

Describes several internal and external negotiations in the 1980s that led to a significant and growing partnership between Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Wal-Mart. From the perspective of Lou Pritchett, P&G's Vice President of Sales and Customer Development, the unfolding... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Negotiation; Distribution Channels; Partners and Partnerships; Sales